Erdogan seeks domestic support through Syria war: Analyst

The potential bid by Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to engage in a military operation in Syria is meant to restore “the flagging domestic support” for his own government, an analyst tells Press TV.

On March 27, the video-sharing website, YouTube, uploaded an audio recording implicating the upper echelons of the Turkish government in planning to carry out a false-flag operation that would directly involve Ankara in the Syrian crisis.

The audio file plays the voices of Chief of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization Hakan Fidan, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, and Deputy Chief of Military Staff Yasar Guler and other senior officials.

“The only reason I could think of is that this (a false-flag operation) would be a means for Erdogan to shore up the flagging domestic support by taking the troops into a war on the basis of self-defense that then he would say: ‘Well, you know, we have to support our troops’,” Sharif Nashashibi, a journalist and Middle East expert, told Press TV in an interview.

He added that the leaked audio revealed the “level of desperation” of the Turkish officials and their readiness to achieve whatever they want at the cost of putting the lives of soldiers and civilians at risk and getting mired in a complicated war such as in Syria.

The commentator explained that most of the wars launched under false pretexts are geared toward domestic gains because people rally around the troops and their leader at times of war.

“So this is [such] an attempt…. Erdogan has been under increasing pressure domestically over various issues and, you know, all I can see from this act is a way to divert people’s attention from corruption scandals, from other authoritarian practices that he is doing, focusing it on a war supposedly of national self-defense and shoring up his support,” Nashashibi pointed out.

He noted that other leaders who have launched such actions around the world in other situations shared the same logic.